20 Bizarre Real-Life Phobias

Different people are scared of different things. While fear is a totally normal human emotion there are some fears that pass into extraordinary levels, and we call them phobias.�

A phobia is a kind of anxiety syndrome that results in a persistent fear of a situation or object leaving the sufferer doing all that they can do to avoid the object of their fear. There are thousands and thousands of phobias�suffered by people all over the world, but we wanted to draw attention to 20 of the strangest ones we’ve ever encountered.

1. Pentheraphobia

You might hate your mother-in-law, but are you scared of her? If you can’t even stand the thought of the woman you might be suffering from penteraphobia, a phobia of mother-in-laws. This sounds strange, but it can be the result of both an inciting incident, or simply natural stress. However, it’s more likely that something in a�past relationship with a mother-in-law would cause the anxiety, and therefore the phobia to develop.

Clare Whitfield Chief Editor

Clare Whitfield is the Editor of Stay at Home Mum and a recognised voice in practical home management for Australian families. Based in the northern suburbs of Sydney, she balances editorial leadership with life as a stay at home mum to two school age children. Her background in home economics and more than a decade of experience in recipe development, family budgeting, and household systems inform her work.

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